Customers’ satisfaction is ranked as:
- satisfied or good
- neither/nor
- dissatisfied or poor
The satisfaction of customers is considered on the basis of the percentage of people who felt satisfied or good with station facilities during peek and off-peak hours.
3. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
The findings from passengers’ satisfaction with South West Trains facilities are categorised into three main sectors which are station atmosphere, staff performance and physical facilities.
3.1. Satisfaction with station atmosphere
Source: National Passenger Survey conducted by Passenger Focus, Spring 2012
Overall, more than a half of the passengers found the station atmosphere satisfactory. However, the fulfilment of passengers’ demands sharply decreased compared to Spring 2011. Satisfaction with overall environment at peak hours suffered a downturn change through a year, decreasing remarkably from 64% to 54%. At the same time, the numbers of customers satisfied with cleanliness and personal security considerably fell by 3%.
On the other hand, the passengers’ satisfaction in off-peak times was rather stable, since it either stayed the same or slightly increased by 1%.
3.2. Satisfaction with staff performance
Source: National Passenger Survey conducted by Passenger Focus, Spring 2012
When it comes to staff performance, not many customers expressed satisfaction with staff availability, especially in peak times with 46% satisfied. Nevertheless, chart 3.2 indicates positive feedback from passengers in terms of the attitudes and helpfulness of the staff and the way requests to staff were handled.
Although the number of customers pleased with the attitudes and helpfulness of staff at peak hours noticeably dropped, the overall satisfaction of passengers did grow. Specifically, the average percentage of satisfied people was about 65% in 2011 and 68% in 2012. Another striking point is that how station staff handling passengers’ requests during peak hours significantly improved with 91% satisfied (75% in Spring 2011).
3.3. Satisfaction with physical facilities
As regards the station physical facilities, while the change in customers’ feedback in off-peak times after a year seemed to be positive, it is quite obvious that the percentage of satisfied customers in peak times considerably declined.
In detail, table 3.3 below shows that apart from a marginal improvement in provision of information about train times and platforms, the other sectors suffered a sharp reduction in the proportion of people feeling satisfied.
Table 3.3: Passengers’ satisfaction with physical facilities in peak times
Source: National Passenger Survey conducted by Passenger Focus, Spring 2012
The facilities/services and facilities for car parking proved to be least fulfilled since the numbers of satisfied passengers dramatically diminished by 13% and 12% respectively.
4. CONCLUSIONS
The above analysis indicates that South West Trains got positive feedback from customers as most of the listed aspects were assessed to be good by more than half of the passengers. Nevertheless, passengers seemed to feel more pleased while travelling in off-peak times than in peak times. Hence, it can be concluded that the facilities and services that the stations provided could not satisfy a large number of customers simultaneously.
Furthermore, it should be noted that there were several sectors that witnessed the lack of customers’ satisfaction such as:
- Facilities and services
- Facilities for car parking
- Availability of staff
Consequently, in order to fulfill the increasing demands of customers, South West Trains should take proper actions to upgrade the quality of such sectors in particular and the station facilities and services in general.
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
South West Trains could enhance the level of customers’ satisfaction by applying the three following measures:
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Upgrading unqualified facilities and services by carrying out specific surveys to find out the demands and expectations of customers towards stations’ facilities and services so as to recognise issues, solve problems and increase the level of satisfaction.
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Rationalising car-parking facilities by applying new fee charging policy (e.g. offering discount during off-peak times). In addition, South West Trains could increase parking capacity for customers by working with local authorities to expand parking zone, encouraging employees to use alternative transportation or to park in peripheral lots.
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Improving staff quality and quantity by offering staff a range of essential training programmes and recruiting more employees. Besides, basing on performance observations, the company should retrain staff whose performances were below certain standards.
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Personal security
Overall environment
Cleanliness
Satisfied (%)
Availability
Handling requests
Attitudes, helpfulness
Satisfied (%)
by
b4bycheese (student)
